Connections Newsletter March 2018

Dear Child Surivors, Welcome to the first edition of Connections for 2018.

2017 was a very busy year for us with the launch of the new Anthology “A Point In Time“and the CSH portrait exhibition. The theme for this year will centre on our Child Survivor group coming together socially as well as continuing to learn more about the challenges child survivors experience

as time goes by. We are planning a few significant events for the year and will let you know when we have finalised the details.

For those child survivors who might wish to order a copy of A Point in Time (our first print run of 100 copies has sold out). A new batch is on its way to the presses and will be back on the JHC shelves as soon as possible. Orders can be placed with Tosca in the JHC office: 9528 1985 or admin@jhc.org.au

Viv Parry, Chairperson, CSH

Child Survivor Compensation Claim

The information below gives the guidelines for child survivors to apply for a one off non means tested payment. Please contact Victoria Trakhtman at Jewishcare, Victoria is ready to assist you with the application. Her direct number is 8517 5961. This fund is open to Jewish Nazi victims who were persecuted as Jews and were born January 1, 1928 or later AND who suffered one of the following types of persecution:

(I) Were in a concentration camp; or

(II) Were in a ghetto (or similar place of incarceration in accordance with the German Slave Labor Program); or

(III) Were in hiding or living under false identity/illegality for a period of at least 6 months in Nazi-occupied or Axis countries; (as defined by the Article 2/CEE Fund

agreement); or

(IV) Were a foetus during the time that their mother suffered persecution as described above. It’s open only to victims that have not applied for CSF before.

Applications must be submitted by survivors, not heirs. However, if an eligible survivor passes away after an application form is received and registered by the Claims Conference, the surviving spouse is entitled to payment. If there is no surviving spouse, the child(ren) of the eligible child survivor is entitled to the payment. The fund will issue a one-time payments of 2,500.

Kind regards, Victoria Trakhtman, Jewishcare: 8517 5961.

Financial situation

Five years after canceling CSH annual membership fees we ask that you might consider making a donation to top up our funds. We abolished CSH membership fees in 2013. The funds we had accumulated were transferred to a CSH account at the JHC and all our expenses are paid from the account by the JHC accounts department.

JHC Executive Director Warren Fineberg signs all expenses requests handed to him by me. Needless to say over the past years our funds are now depleted. The main expense is stamps, $200 every time we send out Connections. We would also like to have our CSH wall hanging professionally cleaned and possibly framed. It would be great to be able to have a CSH light luncheon

event catered for or be able to place an ad in the Jewish News to advertise a CSH event so all child survivors can attend.

There is no suggested donation $ amount, those CSH who feel they might like to contribute can do so by sending a cheque made out to the Jewish Holocaust Centre and mail to: Jewish Holocaust Centre, 13-15 Selwyn Street, ELSTERNWICK 3185, with Child survivors group clearly written on the back of the cheque or attached to a note.

If you wish to pay by credit card please phone the JHC on 9528 1985 and ask for Tosca. Receipts for Taxation purposes will be posted to you if requested.

Working in the Shadows, Trying to Create Light

Be careful what you wish for, people say. One day, many years back, when I was knee deep in nappies, I would dream of having an interesting job. As I mashed bananas for my young child, I longed for intelligent conversation instead of the cutesy goo-goo ga-ga that came out of her mouth.

And then, it started happening. I volunteered briefly at the Jewish Holocaust Centre, and my mother would kindly step in to give me a few hours break from the baby. I thoughthow interesting the place was, although at the same time, it was quite forbidding. It was 1997 and there were mostly Holocaust survivors volunteering at the Centre and I felt quite out of place. They appreciated me being there, but it wasn’t a welcoming environment. That stint lasted a few months, during which time I helped Phillip Maisel set up a spreadsheet containing information of all the testimonies he had collected. I wanted to become more involved in the filming of the testimonies, but this was off-limits to me.

I returned to volunteer at the Centre in 2001 while studying for a Masters in Public History, this time working with the curator Saba Feniger and her team. I felt much more welcome as Saba and her assistant, Eva Marks, took me under their wings and showed me the ropes. And, while there was always a lot of work to do, the emphasis of the day seemed to be ‘The Lunch’. Each department had an allocated hour in the lunch room and when the curators marched into the kitchen it was quite an affair, with everyone in the team bringing a plate of food to share. Another thing that surprised me was the humour, as many a joke was shared. The main issue I had was that the punch lines were delivered in Yiddish – and while everyone was cackling I would ask for an explanation only to be told that there wasn’t really an English equivalent. I soon learned the lay of the land, with different survivors managing different departments, each with their own personality, each capable of being fiercely protective of their domain while desperately wanting to share the knowledge they were guarding. My mother-in-law Sabina Josem and her colleague, Rosa Freilich, ran the library that didn’t lend books. Just wanting to read one invited an interrogation.

Ursula Flicker ran a tight ship in the archives office, with plastic covers on all the computers, and signs everywhere informing the volunteers of what they could and couldn’t

do. Phillip Maisel was busy day in and day out interviewing survivors and dealing with the demands of technology while on a tight budget. And Mike Giligich and Herbert Leder hid in the dark room, making prints of photos that had been found in Holocaust text books, a job that the internet made redundant. I was never sure exactly what Meyer Burston did, but I sensed that he was the glue holding all of these departments together, managing all the personalities, all the differences of opinions.

After a year my volunteering turned into a part-time job, as Saba Feniger decided to retire. Looking back I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was naïve. People I met would ask how I could cope with the subject matter, but that was, in a way, the easy part. I found learning more and more about the events of the Holocaust to be extremely stimulating, particularly as my goal was to translate the complicated events into something more easily digested by our visitors. My job was rewarding. What was difficult was negotiating the landscape of a workplace filled with survivors who had experienced trauma. Nothing prepared me for this.

Jump ahead 17 years and, apart from Phillip, not one of the survivors who worked in the upstairs departments is still volunteering and many have passed away. Despite the fact that my early years at the centre were difficult, I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to work with those passionate and dedicated individuals. Today I sit at my desk in the shadow of Saba, whose endeavours loom large. She taught me how to use a hammer and she taught me how to use words. The dark room has been repurposed as an art store, but when I venture in there I sense Mike and Herbert in that space, making images magically appear on blank paper. When Julia Reichstein, our librarian, opens the door to the library in the morning she knows that Rosa and Sabina are watching over her and tutting away. And whenever I enter the archives office I think of Ursula and her fierce determination, urging us never to forget what happened. The signs she created are no longer on the walls but they have left imprints on my mind.

Jayne Josem, JHC Curator & Head of Collections

The late Saba Feniger with Jayne Josem.

The Photography Department with The late Mike Gilligich and the late Herbert Leder.

My Story... My Life - John Lamovie

My name is Maurice Szlamowicz and I was born in 1936 in Paris. My parents David and Chana together with my elder sister Frymet (Fanny) and I lived at No 16 Rue Du Moulin Joli, Belleville, Paris.

The family was originally from Warsaw, Poland. My father in the early days was a shoemaker by trade as was his brother Charles and together in 1926 the brothers left Poland for France in the hope of being able to more easily gain a permit to leave Europe. Their aim was to give their large extended families a better life.

Learning new skills and having worked extremely hard in their new country, now with sufficient funds and a good place to live, David together with his brother arranged for each of their respective families to travel to France. They arrived successfully during 1929, no small feat with over twenty family members in the group. Relishing their new homeland the Szlamowicz families thrived, little did they know what the future would hold.

The war started in 1939 and my father, his brother and three of his brothers in law all volunteered for the French army.

In June 1940, the German army entered Paris and took control. The French Government fled to Vichy, a city in the South. France signed an armistice with the Germans and in fact became allied to Germany.

The German authorities decided to pass laws affecting foreign Jews and subsequently French Jews as they had done in Germany. All Jewish people were required to register with the local police station, my father like many others refused to do so.

As a result of these laws (over 18 months) Jewish people lost their civil rights, homes, income, bank accounts and their businesses were taken over then sold to people who could prove they were Aryan for at least two generations . By 1942, my father decided join his brother Charles and

move to Lyon which remained under the control of the Vichy Government. His decision was made after a friend of his who was a police officer came one night to my parents’ home to warn my father he would be back in a few days to arrest him.

My mother, my sister and I still felt safe in Paris and stayed. A short time later the French authorities forcefully took over my father’s business, leaving the family destitute. Learning of the situation my father decided it was no longer safe for the family to stay in Paris and strongly suggested to my mother that she should join him in Lyon, a city which was not yet occupied by the Germans.

My mother agreed and made the necessary arrangements to leave the occupied part of France for the Vichy side. My mother decided not to risk taking me and left me in the care of her parents who still lived in Paris.

My mother Chana and my sister Frymet who was nearly seventeen, tried to cross the border in July 1942 but were caught by the French police and taken to an internment camp, La Lande. They were later transferred to Drancy in Paris, which was the largest internment camp in France. On the 14th of September, 1942 in convoy 32 they were transported to Auschwitz arriving on September 16th and were given tattooed numbers. My sister was murdered within days and my mother was killed on the 3rd of June 1944 in Auschwitz Birkenau.

After my father received a letter from his father in law that my mother and sister were being held in Drancy, my father arranged for a friend in the underground to collect me from my grandparents in Paris and bring me to join him in Lyon. I successfully crossed the demarcation line at night. On that night I vividly remember having to sleep in a double

The house John and his father live in at Murat Le Quaire.

John aged 7 with his father John, his father and uncle Charles at Murat Le Quaire.

bed with two older men, their very smelly feet resting right next to my head, remains a strong memory.

I rejoined my father and we hid in a building at the edge of town. Within a few weeks the French police came to the building and arrested everyone, men, women and children and we were taken into custody on the 28th of July, 1942. My father was a member of the French underground and unfortunately was caught in the barn where he was trying to hide a quantity of blank identity cards. He could not escape the consequences and was taken to a concentration camp Rivesaltes in the south of France. Fortunately my father was able to escape.

It was my sixth birthday on the second day of my arrest, and I was kept in custody in a waiting room after being questioned by the police. Falling asleep I was woken by a woman who had been our neighbour. She had been arrested the same morning together with her daughters aged 8 and 10.

Our neighbour was eventually released having successfully convinced the police she and her family were not Jewish, in fact she stated her husband was a prisoner of war in Germany. When she saw me asleep in the waiting room she decided to wake me and carried me out of the police station with her two daughters beside her. Whilst crossing the road, a Jewish woman, Simone who was a friend of my fathers, recognised me and knowing my father’s brother Charles she took me safely to him. I spent the next twelve months on the move living with three different uncles in three different hiding places. Whilst living with Uncle Charles in Lyon in a small shop which had been forced to close, the French police hunting for Jews tried to break down the steel shutters with their rifle butts.

My father, David after escaping Rivesaltes rejoined me and we went into hiding in a small village called Muratle-Quaire high in the mountains in Auvergne the centre of France where his brother Charles had arrived earlier, we all had false names and papers.

I had to go to the local primary school and also attended the Catholic Church on Sundays. At roll call I had a problem remembering my false name much to the amusement of my fellow students. After hearing of my difficulties Uncle Charles was inspired to make me a small silver ring with my new initials on it which I wore and at roll call I only had to look at the ring and wait for my false name to be called to answer correctly.

As the village was high in the mountains it was covered with snow for three or four months each winter. At school recess in winter the boys rushed out to urinate, writing their names in the snow. I could not join my class mates because I was circumcised and fearful of being discovered, I always went into a cubicle.

In June 1944, the Allied forces landed in Normandy to begin their campaign to liberate France.

In August 1944, my father and I travelled by truck to help liberate Paris from the Germans.

In 1945, at the end of the war in Europe, sadly after making numerous enquiries over two to three years to the new French Government my father was able to confirm that his wife and his daughter had not survived Auschwitz and that her parents had been murdered in Madjdanek concentration camp in Poland in 1943, together with two of their sons.

In 1952 my father having remarried, decided to leave Paris with his new wife, stepdaughter and me and we all migrated to Australia.

Children and Choosing Life

As I watch the nightly news, the carpet bombing of civilians, especially children and seemingly endless insane killings, woundings and causing life-long traumas, and what it means to be a refugee, a child survivor, I ponder Deuteronomy 30;19. Which uttered all those centuries ago and in different and complex times. It says: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life, that you and your offering may live.”

What choice in 2018 for life has the infant, the child, running, seeking relief, with tears and pleas whose parents lie dead before him or her?

What choice do the refugees on leaking and unseaworthy boats have after they have chosen life, facing a horrendous battle to survive on the high seas after escaping what

is described as “hell on earth” conditions in their own homelands?

Horrors those who can’t imagine their sufferings still walk in their shoes and decide how they should live- choose life for them? It is so easy to walk in other’s shoes these days with the mass means of communications and communicating.

Only this time ending the nuclear and other armament threats, which could end “civilisation” as we know it, hanging over people kind.

Choosing life for people, especially the children, children everywhere, no matter who or what we are, beliefs and wishes. Members of one small Planet Earth.

Stan Marks OAM

Greetings from Eva Marks

Gulag is an acronym for the Soviet bureaucratic institution of forced labour camps in Stalin’s era and even after believed until Gorbachev became leader.

The major camps ranged from the freezing Arctic in the north to the Siberian east and Asian south, quite extensive. The death rate in the camps was high due to many factors, including starvation, beatings, constant hard labour despite the torrid weather and man’s inhumanity to women, men and children. There is no exact figure of how many perished in the camps, but it is estimated at a very large number, even three million.

Eva Marks was a foundation member of the CSH and has been congratulated in Parliament and by Julia Gillard personally for her work fostering understanding of the Shoah and combating hatred. Eva has also received a prestigious award from Austria for her efforts over many years. A book will be launched during April at TBI, celebrating the life stories of Eva and her equally special husband Stan.

Pesach was a non event in the dreaded Soviet Gulags, where I spent more than six years.

Sunday 1 April

As I remember the camps, I contrast them with life in Australia, the freedoms and general life style we are able to enjoy, as though another world away.

Wishing all child survivors, survivors generally and the volunteers and staff at the Holocaust centre Chag Sameach, and not to forget to place potato peel on the special plate in memory of the million and a half children who perished in the Shoah. Let us remember them in today’s uncertain and dangerous world, where children are still being massacred.

JHC Calendar of Events

Pesach Day 2/Easter Sunday MUSEUM CLOSED

Monday 2 April

Easter Monday MUSEUM CLOSED

Friday 6 April

Pesach Day 7

MUSEUM CLOSED

Wednesdday 11 April, 6.15pm

Yom Hashoah Candle Lighting Ceremony in front of the Eternal Flame

Wednesday 11 April, 7.30pm

Yom Hashoah Commemoration

Robert Blackwood Hall, Monash University, Clayton

Tickets: JCCV Office 9272 5566

Sunday 15 April, 11.00am

75th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising with eyewitness accounts from survivors

Venue: Jewish Holocaust Centre

Enquiries: 9528 1985 or admin@jhc.org.au

Sunday 15 April, 3.00pm

Czechoslovakian Torah Scroll Commemoration

Eva Marks

Venue: Jewish Holocaust Centre Enquiries: 9528 1985 or admin@jhc.org.au

Thursday 19 April, 11.00am

JHC Social Club

Guest Speaker: Eglal Ali

Nuba Mountains Community Association of Victoria

Venue: Jewish Holocaust Centre

Enquiries: Barbara Sacks on 0404 224 498 or barbaras9@bigpond.com Office: 9528 1985 or admin@jhc.org.au

Sunday 22 April, 2.00pm

Book Launch: “I Am Sasha”

Author Anita Seltzer in conversation with Mr Robert Sessions, former Director, Penguin Books

Venue: Jewish Holocaust Centre

Enquiries: 9528 1985 or admin@jhc.org.au

Wednessday 25 April

Anzac Day Holiday

MUSEUM OPEN - 12.00PM - 4.00PM

Sunday 29 April, 4.00pm

JHC Film Club

“Intore” (2014) 76mins, Rwanda

Guest Speaker: Sue Hampel OAM, JHC Co-President

Entry: $10 - Venue: Jewish Holocaust Centre

Get Well Wishes and Congratulations

Mazel Tov! To all child survivors who have celebrated a significant birthday recently or any birthday! We acknowledge Roza Riaikkenen and Paulette Goldberg’s 80th!!

We send our best wishes to those child survivors or their

JHC Social Club: Eglal Ali

Guest Speaker

EGLAL ALI

family members who may be unwell at this time, our caring thoughts are with you.

CHAG SAMEACH!!!

Viv.

Nuba Mountains Community Association of Victoria.

“Eglal Ali in conversation with Lisa Buchner”

Thursday 19 April 2018

Time: 11.00am

Eglal Ali is a community leader of the Nuba Mountains Community Association of Victoria. She lived in Dilling, a small town in Nuba Mountains, Sudan, and came to Australia in 2005.

As an adult she worked in Sudan in a clothing factory. Now in Australia, Eglal works in aged care. She is married with one daughter.

For this time only, the Social Club will be meeting at 16 Selwyn Street, Elsternwick - across the road from the Jewish Holocaust Centre (easily accessible).

JHC Film Club: “Intore” (2014)

Sunday 29 April 2018

INTORE (2014) RWANDA 76 MINS

Directed by Eric Kabera

Guest Speaker: Sue Hampel OAM, JHC Co-President

INTORE offers a powerful and rare look at how Rwanda survived its tragic past by regaining its identity through music, dance, and the resilience of a new generation.

It’s a story of triumph, survival, hope, and a lesson in how to forgive and live, through the eyes of a mother whose grief gives hope; an artist who chose to forgive rather than seek revenge; a maestro who brings together the National Ballet with an incredible touch of genius; and a young man whose determination and hard work has given the Rwandan culture a new dimension of identity and celebration. Through these characters and others, viewers will bear witness to how the nation rose above the ashes of an horrific 1994 genocide, to become a world model of post-conflict peace and unity.

The film features music performances from Rwanda’s top traditional and commercial artists in music and dance, interwoven with poignant interviews from genocide survivors and perpetrators who sit side-by-side; plus Rwandan leaders, legends, and Hollywood elite.